A complex system is a system whose properties are not fully explained by an understanding of its component parts. Complex systems consist of a large number of mutually interacting and interwoven parts, entities or agents. They are woven out of many parts, the Latin complexus comes from the Greek pleko or plektos, meaning "to plait or twine." (Gell-Mann). Complex systems is also often used as a broad term addressing a research approach which includes ideas and techniques from chaos theory, artificial life, evolutionary computation and genetic algorithms.....
A complex system is composed of several elements interacting among them. The complexity of a system depends on the number of elements that conform it, the number of interactions among the elements, and the complexities of the elements and the interactions. (See Section 2.1.)
a large collection of interacting parts or entities
a network of component nodes that share knowledge with each other and adapt their behavior in order to collaborate to achieve global system goals that could not be achieved alone by any individual node
an open system, and the peculiarity of open systems is that they interact with other systems outside of themselves
a system that has two or more potentially contradictory descriptions
a system with a large number of elements, building blocks or agents, capable of interacting with each other and with their environment
One not describable by a single rule. Structure exists on many scales whose characteristics are not reducible to only one level of description. Systems that exhibit unexpected features not contained within their specification. Systems with multiple objectives.
A collection of many simple nonlinear units that operate in parallel and interact locally with each other so as to produce emergent behavior.
There are many definitions of complexity, therefore many natural, artificial and abstract objects or networks can be considered to be complex systems, and their study (complexity science) is highly interdisciplinary. Examples of complex systems include ant-hills, ants themselves, human economies, nervous systems, cells and living things, including human beings, as well as modern energy or telecommunication infrastructures.
